Journalling Challenge

I am confused about journalling. What is it? Journalling is not a word we use in Australia, however I have a number of books about ‘journalling’ or ‘art journals’ that I got for inspiration & techniques for my artists books. Some of these books are really excellent, particularly this one  of Lynne Perella,  Artists’ Journals and Sketchbooks: Exploring and Creating Personal Pages which is worth buying for the page on image transfers alone. Her other one is pretty jolly good too  – Alphabetica: An A-Z Creativity Guide for Collage and Book Artists (Quarry Book) – it’s more a catalogue of lovely artists books/art journals by various artists, but with a showcase of unusual and interesting techniques.

What sparked this, is that I recently bought a book by another author, True Vision: Authentic Art Journaling which has similar techniques. Not that I mean they overlap, more that I mean they are collage, layering, other art techniques. These are just two of the authors that I have, but they ALL use these collage/layering techniques and I just don’t get how they’re a JOURNAL. Perhaps in some cases they may be a journal in the sense that the artist is sharing their innermost thoughts with the book.  Where I don’t see them as a journal is that the layers are very time consuming, so the ‘daily’ aspect of a journal must be missing except for the fact that, yes, you could work on them daily, but not finish a spread daily. And there is very little drawing.

Through an on-line art mailing list, I came across another artist in the USA who also remains ambivalent about journalling. We have a challenge to ‘journal’ every 2nd day in September. This is my first spread. I’m re-using a book about dreams, which is why I started with a dream I had.

My aim is to DRAW in every journal spread, but to use some of the techniques from my myriad of books to create an integrated page spread.